The botnet is dead (enough), but now what? You’l recall that Microsoft, working in conjunction with pretty much every organization on the planet, had managed to lop the head off the Rustock botnet. The world’s attention now turns to finding the people behind the botnet. Leads show that the botnet may have been run by as few as two or three people, so actually tracking these people down may prove a tricky proposition.
Global spam levels are said to have dropped pretty dramatically since the botnet was shut down, which is good news for… everyone, I’d say. Well, everyone except the people who were making money off it.
Security researchers believe the botnet was the handiwork of only a few people because it was so tightly controlled. They don’t believe to many people had their fingers in the pie, as it were. Less McDonalds and more corner meat truck.
One such researcher told the BBC: “When you are a programmer and you realize that you have the full force of the Microsoft legal department pointed directly at you, then you might say to yourself its time to try something else.”
Can you even imagine having to deal with that? Probably time to go legitimate, I’d say.